“I’m a bit disoriented,” says Sofia Boutella, perched in a makeup chair in her San Diego suite. “My phone rang to wake me up, and I had no idea where I was—or when we are.” Call it business as usual for the Star Trek Beyond star, who has flown in from London to spend the day at Comic-Con, before hopping on a flight straight back there tonight. “It’s been revolutionary for me,” she adds. “Like nothing I’ve ever experienced before.”

It’s the culmination of a whirlwind year for the Algiers-born, Paris-bred actress, whose career changed course once she landed the part of the fierce alien warrior Jaylah—the staff-yielding alien fighter, a rather demanding role in its own right. Think months of early morning bo staff sessions and four daily hours in hair and makeup to receive the extraterrestrial prosthetics and monochromatic face paint required. “I loved the sci-fi aspect of it,” she says. “Ships and hydraulics and seeing aliens all day long. That sort of thing.” Of course, in exchange, Boutella has scarcely spent any time in her Los Angeles home. “I haven’t been back in a year!” she says, laughing. Now, a regular road warrior, she’s all but mastered the art of criss-crossing time zones with ease.

For one, there’s the near-constant jet lag. To fight it, Boutella relies on religious in-flight hydration and Cellfood oxygen drops, picked up at her local health shop. “I think if your body’s deprived of oxygen from the plane, you keep yawning,” she says. “I add the drops to my water, and it helps.” Then there are the nourishing French creams—La Roche-Posay, Avène, and Homeoplasmine—sourced from Paris pharmacies and slathered onto the skin, along with Elemis Hydra-Gel eye patches and Intraceuticals oxygen treatments to keep her complexion moist. “How’s my skin?" she asks, turning to her makeup artist for a second opinion. "Amazing, right? There’s a glow to it.”

As for her best French pharmacy find, it’s an old-fashioned peppermint-based antiseptic called Ricqlès, of all things, which Boutella describes as “very, very old-school.” “It’s minty and there’s a bit of alcohol in it, so you can disinfect with it or use it as a mouth freshener,” she says. "I love to have a bottle in my bathroom.” What else does the peripatetic star consider key? “Sleep is the best beauty tip ever, which I need massively right now,” she says. “Sleeping and water are lifesavers—that’s true beauty right there.” C’est vrai.